Former Israeli Ambassador to the US says former Israeli PM Netanyahu has a good shot to win

Former Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer says that former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a good shot at winning in the upcoming election. 

Benjamin Netanyahu served as Israel's prime minister from 1996 to 1999 and once again from 2009 to 2021. Israel's election takes place on Tuesday, Nov. 1. 

"There's a bloc that is in Israel called the Netanyahu Bloc, and that's in polls at 60/61 which is right around the threshold we need," Dermer said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "We have 120 seat parliament. So in order to win, it's not a single party that we get 61 seats. We have a coalition of parties. And the Netanyahu Bloc — there's four different parties and together, they're getting according to the polls, about 60 or 61 seats."

Dermer said that there is also an anti-Netanyahu bloc where a lot of people, specifically Arabs, are coming out strong against the former prime minister. 

"On the other side, you have an anti-Netanyahu bloc that is really spread out between centrist parties, leftist parties, and Arab parties as well," Dermer explained. They don't really agree on anything, except for the fact that they don't want Netanyahu to return to power. So I would say that Netanyahu definitely is in the pole position to win."

According to Dermer, the Israeli election will be determined by who shows up to the polls.

It's all going to come down to the turnout on Election Day and who is going to show up at the polls," Dermer stated. 

This is Israel's fifth round of elections in the past three years and it has all came down to voter turnout, according to the former ambassador.